Thursday, October 10, 2013

Ft.
Hood – The exercise – run 50 yards at breakneck speed, drop down
and do 10 pushups as quickly as possible, vault a concrete wall, and
squeeze off 5 rounds of military match grade .308 caliber ammo –
the venerated cartridge known as the .30-'06 - at a stationary target
representing a hostage taker, within 10 seconds after assuming a
prone firing position.

The
objective – put a round through the bad actor's eye, or somewhere
in a triangle formed by his brows and the point of his chin, thus
quietening him for eternity, canceling his ticket, cleaning his
clock.

Try
your best – your very best - to get the job done with one round
while squeezing the shot off with an elevated heart rate and a
respiration cycle peaking at its top parameters.

Those
are real time conditions.

Jeff
Dwyer is an 11-year veteran of the Austin Police Department's SWAT
operations, an Army veteran with combat experience, and a trainer
bent on honing the reactions of snipers who must make a split-second
decision when only split seconds stand in the way of the life or
death of a victim.

He's
running an exercise of 14-hour days at the Elm Knob Sniper Range at
this fort, the largest on American soil, a venue between two bluff
mesas near the tank range, where Bradley fighting vehicles and
Stryker motorized cannon prowl the prairies. The firing line
overlooks a field of fire that slopes downward and away; it offers
target selection between 100 yards, and up to a mile and a half.

Though
there are firing ranges in Austin, they offer nothing to compare to
this.

Officer Jeff Dwyer

The
experience of firing through barriers – solid objects as diverse as
auto windshields and jetliner windows – while distorting conditions
of difficult visibility complicate matters such as flashing emergency
lights of red and blue or the blinding glare of shifting helicopter
beacons, is unique to each situation. It is something that cannot be
replicated in any way, other than by doing it.

But
the conditioned techniques of body geometry - a solid rest, breath
control, an integral cheek weld between rifle stock and face, and the
ultimate silky squeeze of finger on trigger - is only part of the
skill set.

Knowing
when to take the shot is something left entirely up to the police
officer or soldier tasked with the job of solving the problem.

No
on-scene commander, no supervisor, no citizen review board – no one
else - can tell the trigger man when to take the shot.

It's
a matter of judgment.

“If
I feel someone is going to cause death or serious bodily injury, I
have the power to make that decision,” said Officer Dwyer, as he
briefed media and police, soldiers and commanders.

That's
where the “Brave Rifles” of the 3rd
Cavalry Regiment come in. They need that expertise, and they have a
need to hone that same skill set.

“We're
reaching out to our community,” said Maj. Adam Weece, public
affairs officer for the outfit.

Maj. Adam Weece

It's
all part of a lesson learned during multiple deployments of
commanders and their men over 10 years of war in Iraq and
Afghanistan. Standard Pentagon and War College doctrine, they seek to
instill the state of the art acquired during the past one-and-a-half
wars in returning veterans and men who are looking to be employed in
the Army's sniper program – or carry their skills to a civilian
employment with the same set of considerations and practicalities.

It's
called decentralized leadership, and it emphasizes maintaining
control in one's own “lane of influence.”

The
chess board has shifted shape.

“Kings
no longer make all the moves,” Maj. Weece explained. “Let the
dukes and earls make decisions, too.”

Cavalry
objectives are as simple and straight forward as the cops'.

A
placard on the firing line is as terse and military as “forward
march,” or “left face”:

“End
State

“Be
able to engage targets up to 300 meters and stop all bodily function
with one round.

“Be
able to engage targets at 750 meters with a first round hit.

“Be
able to engage targets at 1,000 meters with no more than two rounds.”

It's
done on a day to day basis, on battle fields and hostage situations
worldwide.

It's
a two-man job. The spotter has a 40-power scope; he lets the shooter
know conditions at the target. The breeze might be doing something
entirely different at that lengthy distance from the rifle's rest,
the shooter's roost.

The
average range for a police sniper is 54 yards, said Officer Dwyer.

The
average shooting range for a SWAT operation – usually while serving
a warrant - is three feet, the same distance the FBI maintains is the
average for any gun fight, old west, gang land, back alley, or just a
plain old pure dee cuss fight on any continent, island or peninsula
on the planet.

“It
usually takes place in a bedroom – you know, 10 by 10, or 10 by
12...We've had as many as 8 to 10 people in an area that size,” he
added.